News Archive 2007
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'How it Came to Pass that the Things that Came to Pass Came to Pass.'

Podcast: I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!
16th December, 2007

This time around we're casting our comickal eye on the almost-seventy-year-old work of one Mister Fletcher Hanks, the author of a series of comics published between 1939 and 1941 that are now collected in the brain-breakingly weird I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, ably edited by mister Paul Karasik for Fantagraphics Books.

The two stars of the book are Stardust the Super Wizard ("the most remarkable man who ever lived") and Fantomah, protector of the jungle folk ("the most incredible woman who ever lived"), two of the strangest, most childish and cruelest comic book heroes I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

If, after listening to the review, youre curious to see this stuff for yourself, as well as checking out the book's official site over at www.fletcherhanks.com, I highly recommend the Stardust page maintained by The Mystery Walk, which has scans of several of the Super Wizard's adventures that aren't collected in the book, as well as a "virtual cartoon" version of "Stardust vs. the Mad Giant Experimenter".

Have fun, but be warned: just like Nietzche said, if you gaze for long into the abyss of crap old comics, the crap old comics gaze also into you.

(And before any comics historians start emailing me, I'm aware that I got my dates for Superman's first publication wrong. Action Comics #1 was published in 1938, not 1939 - here's a link to full scans of the entire issue by way of apology).

ROM, Spaceknight
14th November, 2007

I have a poster in an art auction that's taking place at Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon, over in the United States there. The auction is a fundraiser to help pay the medical bills for American comics legend Bill Mantlo, who was in a rollerblading accident more than ten years ago. Bill's brother is his primary carer these days and he has to deal with the vagaries of the US healthcare system, which is a bit of a user-pays arrangement. Hence the fundraiser, which is called Spacenight.

Bill wrote heaps of the superhero comics I read as a kid, including The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Team-Up (where Spider-Man hung out with a different superhero every issue), The Micronauts and ROM Spaceknight. The attentive among you will note that those last two comics were among the pile I brought back from my recent trip to Sydney. So there's been a bit of bedside reading of the old Micronauts and ROM in chez Chewton of late.

ROM is a giant silver space-cyborg who fights the Dire Wraiths, a bunch of aliens who have invaded Earth and impersonated humans in order to overthrow our world from within. When he's not smacking down the Dire Wraiths with his freaky weapons, the Energy Analyser and the Neutraliser, or fighting other superheroes, or teaming up with other superheroes to smack down the Dire Wraiths, ROM spends a lot of his time soliliquising on the anguish that comes with being made into a cyborg - never being able to hold a woman in his arms or smell a flower, &c &c. It's kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with a giant emo space robot. How can you go wrong?

Anyway, I'm a bit excited to be one of the 100 or so contributors to this exhibition, alongside some real heavy-hitters like Sal Buscema, Ron Rege Jr, Renee French and Jeffrey Brown (who, by the way, recently contributed an excellent pic to Monkey Punch Dinosaur). And to underscore this excitement I've put together a desktop wallpaper based on my portrait of The Greatest of the Spaceknights.

It's living over there on the Wallpapers page, just waiting for you to right-click &c and set as your desktop so that you and all who read your emails over your shoulder will be reminded of the nobility and the glory of the cyborg warrior whose sacrifices saved us from the menace of the Dire Wraiths once and for all.

Podcast: The Great Gatsby
3rd November, 2007

I'm having a quiet Saturday in the bungalow that used to be the Chewton police station and now is my office. After a night of eleven almost continual hours of sleep I'm feeling spryer and more alert than I have in weeks.

Bungalow time is a mishmash of idleness and productivity as I sort through paperwork to see what's pending re: promises and commitments, alphabetise a few comics, update a website or two, and think about maybe fixing the door of the chookshed.

And while we're on the topic of websites and comics, the latest addition to my podcast channel is a review of Nicki Greenberg's impressive graphic novel rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, wherein the entire cast is portrayed as a range of nonhuman creatures both real and nonexistant.

Nicki's novel is a watershed in the history of Australian comics in that it's the first time I'm aware of that a major book publisher has published an actual, honest-to-God graphic novel. Rumours circulating seem to imply that this may be only the first of an ongoing list of graphic novels to come out of Allen & Unwin's stables, which can only be a good thing if it turns out to be true.

In the meantime, of course, you can listen to my thoughts on the comic in question by either hitting play on the player above, or by checking out the podcast where it's hosted by the kind folk at odeo.com.

Jutchy Ya Ya - It Can Also Add Excitement
21st October, 2007

It's Jutchy Ya Ya time once again. That makes thirty-five issues to date. Which works out to five a year since 2000. Which isn't bad, as long as you ignore the fact that it was intended as a monthly.

Check out the zines section for a sample of this issue's heapin' helpin' of clip art, toast, whistle technique, software workarounds, zine reviews, potted indigenous history and a photo of the legendary Chuck E. Weiss. As always the print version is better, and if you want one to hold in yer hot little hand, just send a stamp or something interesting in the post by emailing us for the address.

Ziney books
15th October

Two lovely books by two of the luminaries of the Australian zine world that you should know about:

Strawberry Hills Forever (you might need to scroll down to "title02") is Vanessa Berry's collected works, assembling between a single cover years of writing previously seen on the pages of her various zines (Psychobabble, Laughter and the Sound of Teacups, I am a Camera, Vinnies). Vanessa's writing is all very personal, allowing the reader inside her mind to share what excites, inspires, bamboozles and upsets her. From odd corner stores to op-shops, from Portugal to Enmore, reading missives from Vanessa's life is like a letter from an unexpected and delightful pen-pal.

YOU: some letters from the first five years (you might need to scroll down for this one too) is, not surprisingly, a collection of letters all written to YOU. It's an anthology of this great little free zine that is the same thing every issue: a sealed bag containing a double-sided letter from someone you probably don't know. At their best, zines are a form of intimate communication between strangers, and YOU is the epitome of that. Having five years' worth of something like this safely tucked in a single place is pretty damn special if you ask me.

Podcast: Platinum Grit
24th September, 2007

Back from a week in Sydney with the last of the bags unpacked and all the holiday shopping booty finally packed away in its rightful place.

Noteworthy among said booty is the giant green foam fist that makes the sound of glass breaking and snarls HULK SMASH! when you you wear it like a glove and punch stuff ($2.00 at the Roselle Market) and the foot-high pile of old ROM, Micronauts, Omega the Unknown and Savage Henry comics (50c each from Kingdom Comics on Liverpool Street).

Almost lost it all when I left my bag at the airport and then proceeded to incorrectly describe it to airport lost property, but we muddled through somehow, and the bag and its trashy pop culture contents are now safe in their various rightful places at home.

Podcast four features my circa-2005 review of the delightful Platinum Grit, a mainstay of Australian comics that has weathered fortune fair and foul and continued to bring us the hilarious black comedy stylings of a girl, her best friend and their physicist.

As ever you can listen to the podcast on the player above, or head over to odeo.com to listen to it there and perhaps take advantage of the subscription possibilities that are on offer.

That's it for the comic review backlog. The next time we talk podcasts it'll be a brand new review fresh from the RRR airwaves.

Podcast: G0dland
9th September, 2007

How good has Doctor Who been lately? I mean, holy wow I was all on the edge of my seat last night with the whole return of the Master thing. And the week before that, the episode with the stone angels and the DVD easter eggs was the first time I've ever seen time travel actually used as a plot point in Doctor Who. Which is kind of odd.

Podcast number three is the audio version of a review that's already graced this good website, wherein I speak about how excellent the comic known only as G0DLAND (pictured above) is. Which is very.

As always, you can cheggit onetime up there above these words, or you can head over to odeo.com for a listen and a little bit of a subscribe - if you're a subscribin' kind of type. And for added special bonus you can read the review as it originally appeared on Comic Book Galaxy before one of those database crash things coupled with my skills at procrastination and Alan Doane's decision to make CBG a one-man show saw it hosted right here on this little website instead.

Zines: exhbitions and directories
4th September, 2007

There was a nice little article on zines in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, about the Zine Factory exhibition that's on at the Penrith Regional Gallery until mid-October. It's got interviews with Leigh Rigozzi (Fumetti, Trevally of the Shadow of Death), Miss Helen (Fly Away Bird) and Dr. Anna Poletti (Trade Entrance).

It also does that thing that lots of mainstream media reports on zines do, in that it presumes that making zines is some kind of apprenticeship for 'proper' writing, ie writing that's not self-published. Which is a heapin' helpin' of so not true. I didn't 'start out' in zines before going on to write novels. I do both, I've done both for as long as I've been a writer, and I plan on always doing both as long as I can pick up a pen or press down on a keyboard.

(If you want to be specific, if I started out with anything as a writer, it was with the thematic apperception tests that the psychology undergraduates got me to do when I was in grade three. But that's another story.)

For more on zines in Australia, there are a few other good resources out there on the intarwub that I've lately discovered, to whit:

• Melbourne's Sticky Zineopedia (click on "zineopedia")
• Newcastle's own Octapod's Undergrowth zine archive
• Adelaide's Ministry of Zines MySpace page

All chock full of ziney goodness just waiting for some nice young thing to come along and use them as inspiration for making their own zines.

Podcast: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.
1st September, 2007

Episode two of the Comic RRReviews by Adam Ford podcast arrives just in time for Father's Day, so happy Dad Day to all who celebrate it. This episode looks at the hilarious and actiontastic 12-issue superhero comic Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. by Warren Ellis on words and Stuart Immonen on pictures.

As always, you can listen to it right here, or check it out over at odeo.com, which will give you some nice subscription options that will let your automated download systems place your very own copy of said podcast on your very own hard drive. If that's the kind of thing that floats your kicking and 'sploding boat.

Podcast: Character Sketches: Trauma and Joy
25th August 2007, 2007

Character Sketches: Trauma and Joy is the debut release from Australian comic publisher Gestalt Comics. I reviewed it last week on RRR's Aural Text, aided and abetted by hosts alicia sometimes and Steve Grimwade. In the ongoing twoification of this humble site, I'm proud to present said review in the first of what will hopefully be a series of comic review podcasts.

As well as living just above this paragraph, the podcast can be found here, hosted by the folks at odeo.com. Which is dash sporting of them. You can subscribe to the podcast in a bunch of ways, including the ubiquitous iTunes. Which is also dash sporting.

I've been doing these comic reviews every month or so for a couple years now. I've got a backlog of recordings that I'll be adding over the next few weeks, and then I think I'll settle into a more-or-less monthly routine.

So yeah. Podcasts. As the gremlin with the plummy voice in the suit and tie said, "Check it out one time, won't you."

Jutchy Ya Ya - This is not a safety device
15th August, 2007

I've yet to come up with a scheme that will get me invited to be a guest on Spicks and Specks. I used to write for InPress back in the nineties when Myf Warhurst was managing editor, but that's too old and too tenuous a connection to even contemplate exploiting. I once gave her an op-shop copy of David Cassidy's 'Myfanwy' as a belated birthday present, but that's hardly the kind of thing that would tip the scales in my favour.

Anyway, there's a new Jutchy Ya Ya up in the zines section, the thirty-fourth in the series. This time the spotlight focuses on late trains, recent developments in the Northern Territory, gypsies, parenting, experimental computer games, zine reviews, the spectacular Transporter 2 and jumble puzzles.

As always, if you want a print version that you can fold, spindle and mutilate in the privacy of your own home it's as simple as sending us something interesting in the post or on the email (email us for the postal address). Zine swaps are also gratefully accepted.

Doujicon
16th July, 2007

Plus also just quickly, if, say, 12 days from now, you happened to be in the vicinity of Monash University's Caulfield campus, and in the mood to watch a veritable slew (the official collective noun, dontchaknow) of home-grown Australian animation, including 'The Battle of Clarendon Street' all huge-ified on a biggish screen, well you're in luck, because this year's Doujicon (doujinshi = self-published anime and manga) is reprising the Comics to Animation program, which featured said animation, as part of the cavalcade of comics and animation that starts at 10am on Saturday 28 July. More details as they become available at the official Doujicon website.

The Book of Job
9th July, 2007

Tomorrow morning I'm hanging out with thirteen keen-bean teenagers, teaching them the ins and outs of writing for the intarwub. I'm giving them all the trade secrets: short articles/short paragraphs/short sentences; always provide some kind of visual element; if you want people to actually visit your site, either nudity or cats must be involved; how to spell "pwn3d" correctly (capital 3); how to work a content management system - the usual.

But tonight it's just me, my wife and my cat (see?), my daughter asleep (for now) in the next room, and the television off. What better time to direct such a fine intarwub connoisseur as yourself to the latest addition to our fine comics section?

Click the above pic (see?) to check out a sample from my circa-2000 adaptation of the biblical Book of Job. In glorious stick-o-vision, no less. Has the never-ending battle between good and evil ever been rendered so simplistically? Probably, yeah.

The Battle of Clarendon Street
14th June, 2007

Thanks to the folks at Revver, I've finally been able to put a copy of 'The Battle of Clarendon Street' online. Seems all I had to do was procrastinate for three years until advances in web technology solved the problem for me. So now that's my solution for every problem. Mice in the pantry? Sorted. Slow leak in your back tyre? No worries. Just wait a few years and the internet'll fix it.

(clicky to watchy)

TBOCS is the animation that I made in the second year of the multimedia course I did a while back. It's based on a short story I wrote as part of a series called 'One History of the VFL', a bunch of fictional histories that revolve around various Australian Rules teams. I was aided and abetted in this enterprise by the ever-amazing Grant Balfour and the epithet-defying Mister Charles 'Bud' Tingwell.

For the back-story on how the hell I got Bud to do the film, check out the blow-by-blow account in the archives of The Mysterious Creepy Secret Evil Killer Haunted Zombie Blog Graveyard of Doom from BEYOND THE GRAVE!!! here, here and here.

And for the record, I did get him to sign my VHS copy of 'Return of the Cybernauts'. He was very sweet about it, and even shared a few anecdotes with us about Patrick Macnee.

Heavy Product Sighting: General Motors Station
3rd June, 2007

It's a sunny Sunday afternoon I'm sitting watching the daughter wheezing and growling for her own amusement on her rug. She's surrounded by thick-paged cardboard books and soft toys and things that go dingle-dingle when you shake them. Some of those grunts may be pooing. It's always a possibility.

There's a new photo in the Heavy Product Gallery, our celebration of the senior non sequitur sticker of our times. The sighting was an electronic one, sent to us by the euphemistically-named 'somebody in the www'. That certain somebody alerted us to a photo of a sign at the abandoned General Motors Station in Dandenong South, taken by one 'metfink' and uploaded to his fotopic site. Mister Fink has generously allowed us to syndicate said photo in our gallery, and syndicate we shall.

(click on the pic to visit the gallery)

As a reward for their vigilance and generosity, both Somebody and metfink will receive an official Adam Ford Zine Pack (tm) for their trouble. And if you'd like to score such a prize for yourself, all you gots to do is send us a photo of a This Is A Heavy Product sighting in situ. Too easy.

For more about the history of General Motors Station, check out the wiki. Yes, there's a wiki. As alicia sometimes often points out, these days you can be MySpace buddies with a bottle of sauce. Yay the internet.

New poems: cool electrons and peanut butter
21st May, 2007

Sneaking in a quick update from work at lunchtime, with the smell of microwaved laksa and the clink of cutlery drifting past my desk, to say that I have two poems in hutt (specifically issues 3.1 and 3.3) courtesy Queensland's Paper Tiger Media. One is called 'All the other "cool" electrons'. The other one doesn't have a name.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go breathe some un-recycled air.

New poem: Souper Vighagra
18th May, 2007

I have a poem in the May edition of elimae, that delightful online journal of small, unusual things. It's called 'Souper Vighagra'.

Conceived on a Tram reviewed in The Age
14th May, 2007

Conceived On a Tram cracked it for a review in The Age on the weekend, which was a nice surprise birthday present. "Read me something from the paper," said Anna as we clocked up our second hundred kilometres of a four-hundred-kilometre-plus weekend that saw us visiting both sets of parents - both in Melbourne - within a forty-eight hour period.

So I did. And after reading her the article on the woman who uses glass vessels as percussion instruments, I turned to the book reviews section and found this:

(click for the full review)

There's nothing beats a little ego-inflation at 110kph on one's birthday. Or if there is, I can't think of what it might be.

Nick Earls in action
5th May, 2007

I don't like to malign my professional acquaintances, but Nick Earls is a really nice guy. I know a lot of people have a problem with the n-word, but hey - if the shoe fits.

I've been lucky enough to get to know Nick in a small way since our initial email encounter where I unintentionally emotionally blackmailed him into writing a back-cover blurb for Man Bites Dog by sending him an invitation to my 30th birthday jumping castle party (I stole the idea from Zig Zag Street - the idea for the jumping castle, not the emotional blackmail).

But he's not just nice. He's funny and friendly and kind of charming, too. A bit like his books. And now there's a way that you can experience this niceness and funniness for yourself, thanks to three TV ads he did for the City of Brisbane.

That's Nick wearing the "N".

The ads star Nick as himself, trying to come up with the perfect catch-all blockbuster storyline that encapsulates Brisvegas in its entirety. You can download them from Nick's website, Sunny Garden, to watch in the privacy of your own internet.

This is the only way you'll get to see the ads, because, as Nick himself put it, he's since been "traded in for cool young folk with hats who stay up far later than I do".

Well, if it's a choice between being nice and wearing a cool hat, I know which one I'd pick. How about you?

Rude Boy
14th March, 2007

That comic-drawing raconteur Paul Davis has got together with Sleepers Publishing and Hardie Grant and put together a new comic anthology called Conceived on a Tram.

It's a fine collection of work by Melbourne comic artists, a good-looking black and white and red affair with textual contributions by noted funny Melburnians Danny Katz and Sean Micallef. I was lucky enough to catch last night's train home with ZD, one of the Sleepers mavens, and she allowed me a sneak peek of the sweet little thing. My, it's a fine piece of work.

Melburnian comickers represented upon its pages include Dead Xerox founder Tim Danko, Alice Mrongovius (the bandit fox herself), Andrew Weldon (recently spotted in the very New Yorker itself), the delightful Mandy Ord (she of the blackest blacks), Cardigan Comics's own Bernard Caleo, Francis Bear creator Gregory Mackay, the beguiling Trudy White (of Table of Everything fame) and many others.

One of those others happens to be yours truly. A very chuffed yours truly to be in the company of such auspiciously sequentially artistic folk. My comic is a two-page effort called 'Rude Boy in "Got Any Chandler"', a story about a ska-loving private eye, second-hand bookstores, alien abductions and chutney.

Conceived on a Tram is being launched at Trades Hall, on the corner of Victoria and Lygon Streets in downtown Carlton, on April the 5th at 6pm. Mister Sean Micallef will be speaking in some no doubt memorably quizzical and humourous fashion and there will be projections of comic art on the walls. Which is the best thing for them, really.

So come on down. If there's a better way to celebrate Maundy Thursday than to drink beer in the company of comic artists while their lines grace the walls that you lean on, I can't think of one.

To keep you amused while you wait for the launch, I've finally got around to uploading the first chapter of Rude Boy's first adventure (which is about false accusations, rescues, planar worms and sodium pentathol), simply entitled 'Rude Boy in "We're Out of Milk"'. Enjoy.

Poetry Review: Break Me Ouch
16th February, 2007

Friday night movie on Channel Ten tonight is The Bourne Identity. I've seen it before and it's just as good this time. It's a great reference point for someone trying to write an action novel. It's an example of things done right. Really right.

I tried reading Ludlum's novel after I'd seen the movie the first time, but it's far more purple than I had expected. And really long. But at least it didn't have pop-up ads for The Biggest Loser or Celebrity Dog School all the way through it. That's always a bonus.

Anyway, I've got a review up on Cordite this week. I'm adding my comics knowitallidge to my poetry knowitallidge and pointing it in the direction of Michael Farrell's Break Me Ouch. Here's are a couple samples of the kind of thing he's doing in the book.

And if you wanna know what I thought, check out the review.

Jutchy Ya Ya: Add ten, take away one
11th February, 2007

I'm pleased to announce there's a new Jutchy Ya Ya in town. Well, it's a couple months old, but it took me time to arrange the copying and then a bit longer to put the web pages together. But it's here now, and that's all that matters.

This issue features ruminations on snooze buttons, poetry, bushfires, short excursions through North Fitzroy, the doppler shift and the bowel motions of infants.

The whole thing is available in electronic form in the zines section, but if you want a hard copy of your own to fold up and stick in your back pocket, you can always check out the two regular distribution points (Sticky, underneath Flinders Street Station in Melbourne; and the Castlemaine train station) or email us here at Jutchy headquarters to arrange some kind of swap.

The standard transaction involves one copy of the zine for every "something interesting" you send me in the post. As to what constitutes "something interesting", we might refer you to a previous swap with Tim from the fabulous blog known only as Un.

Neopulp: Hamlet vs. Faustus
29th January, 2007

I'm pleased to add another name to the NeoPulp canon. South Australian comic artist Ben Kooyman's Hamlet vs. Faustus takes characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and mixes it together with fist-fights, ninjas, werewolves, poo humour and meditations on the existence of God.

It's a complex and engaging hand-drawn action-comedy epic in twelve photocopied parts, and a fine example of the kind of genre-blending playfulness that NeoPulp embodies.

Where else but NeoPulp would you find Doctor Faustus returned from hell and talking trash to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark before breaking his nose in revenge for the slaughter of Cerberus, the three-headed fire-breathing guard-dog of Hell?

Some would say that the memory of two of the most important theatrical geniuses in the history of the English language has been cheapened by such a cavalier reinterpretation. But they would be wrong.

You can email Mister Kooyman at hamletvsfaustus@optusnet.com.au to score a copy of HvF for your very own, and head elsewhere on this site to check out the NeoPulp Manifesto in full.

And a belated tip of the hat to three other fine examples of what the NeoPulp Manifesto is on about. Taking their place in the list of Those Who Have Gone Before are Joss Whedon's scifi western Firefly/Serenity, the loving adventure-pastiche of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba's ubercool superspy comic Casanova.

Heavy Product Sighting: East Brunswick
14th January, 2007

Another Heavy Product sighting, this time in downtown East Brunswick. Our latest HP-spotter is none other than Dana Lucas, who was wandering the wilds of Miller Street when she came upon the latest addition to our gallery.

"Hope this is some use to you in your gallery," says Ms. Lucas in her email. It sure is, Dana! We appreciate you going to the trouble of snapping a pic for us and winging it our way on the email. As thanks, please accept an official Adam Ford zines and other stuff pack (tm), which will be winging its way to you on the snail-mail.

Don't forget, if YOU know where a TIAHP sticker is living, you can score yourself a similar reward by either taking a photo and sending it to us, or simply letting us know the location so we can go out and take a photo ourselves.

Check out Dana's photo in all its full-size glory, and all other sightings of This Is A Heavy Product stickers at the unofficial Heavy Product Gallery.

Magic Cowboy rides
4th January, 2007

Tonight is the opening night of my brother's exhibition in Sydney. He's put together a bunch of his paintings and you can buy them.

If you're not a painting-buyer yourself, but you do like looking at them, you can still go along and check them out. He won't mind.

I wrote some little stories for the exhibition program. If you get there early enough you can pick one up, along with a nifty little set of swap-cards of each of the paintings.

The exhibition is on until the 10th of January. Full details at hughford.net.